


Unfinished Business

by theblindtorpedo



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: (sort of b/c are Billy and Cornelius ever going to properly be able to talk about feelings? no), Afterlife, Billy thinks its pretty good being dead Cornelius is not so sure, Character Study, Gibson POV, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, One Shot, Purgatory, Relationship Discussions, insight into Billy Gibson's life philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:27:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27846830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theblindtorpedo/pseuds/theblindtorpedo
Summary: Death affords Billy Gibson time to think on himself and his life, and still Cornelius Hickey finds a way to wedge his way into it all. Except this time Billy has the upper hand and Hickey is sorely out of his depth.
Relationships: William Gibson/Cornelius Hickey
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17
Collections: The Terror Bingo





	Unfinished Business

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first time writing for the terror ahhhhh i just really wanted to do something to work through the Rat Wife's personality so I can write him in more plot oriented things later. he's a tough nut to crack my dearest Billy but that's why i find him so intriguing
> 
> Written for my terrorbingo2020 card, prompt: William Gibson

The sheer whiteness that hems him in on all sides is not so different from the blinding vastness of the Arctic sky. Billy considers the familiarity a blessing; he’ll allow himself the vanity of pride, that he had not arrived in the afterlife in a blaze of howling panic. Then again, if the space had been more alien, he may still have taken it in stride, his exhaustion all-encompassing and debilitating, a boot-heel grinding upon his front lobe removed with such abruptness his head spins too fiercely to contemplate his environs to any substantial degree.

After some time, the first focus of his attention is his body. Released from the cage of piercing pain and agonizing aches, now it fills him again to the seams, a trimmer fit than in life when his gangliness was a deterrent to control he clutched at so readily. His limbs were always an inch or so too long, everything about himself hovering just out of convenient bounds, so that with every action he had to dip into the well of mental fortitude if it were to be done with precision and propriety. That self-consciousness had been a virtue as a steward, always aware of how he moved, among whom he moved, with whom he moved. Some men, they danced through life like moths to the flame of ambition, the paths were illuminated to them yet they were blind to the pain of a too easily caught fantasy. That was not Billy Gibson’s way. He sought fault in the world and in himself. On his own terms he felt out these cracks with his fingertips, in sampling the hurt he gauged the risk of embracing it in totality. When the minor pain was too much to bear, he pruned it away, and thus Billy Gibson always saved himself from disaster.

Yet, there is none of those calculated, persistent discomforts here; it is a novel sensation. Billy spends some time luxuriating in the simple pleasure of the curl and splay of his fingers, unblemished as a snowy hill in winter, free of the calluses from hauling or the minute abrasions from scrubbing blood soaked linens until he hadn’t known if the red came from his own veins or had been there to begin with. It’s not such a bad body overall, he thinks, it served its purpose. He knows what they must be doing with his body now, inundated with visions of wind-cracked, salivating mouths closing around gleaming meat. He blithely hopes these are only imaginings and not a preternatural slip into reality. His stomach ought to turn at the thought.

He tries to think of other things, gazes around for a distraction, an idle gesture he does not expect to come to fruition and yet Billy Gibson is surprised.

He spots a hunched figure. Billy watches the man pound fists against the ground, rail and snarl like a beast so that spittle flies from the mouth the man intermittently halts his raving to press fingers inside, then spitting as if he is shocked and disgusted at what he finds within. Billy recognizes the man and lets him be. Hickey will come to him in his own time, as always.

When Hickey spots Billy it is with a glint of joy, a renewed fervor splits across his features, until Hickey’s expression is almost the same as it was back on Terror, coy and desirous, not the deplorable ghost he’d been only seconds before.

His ex-lover stalks towards him. Billy will not be intimidated, folds his hands in front of him, demure as he can be in the face of the coiling energy inside the shorter man, energy that is released immediately as Hickey falls upon him, paws and grasps at him like a drowning man, squeezes his neck so tight if he had a breath left he’d surely expire.

“What a sight, what a sight you are,” Hickey sighs against the nape of his neck. Billy does not return the embrace, instead he stands stiff as a rod as Hickey curls like a sail around him.

“So, it didn’t all go to plan then?” he asks.

“You mean to tease me,” Hickey says, pulling away so they may lock eyes.

“It’s been some time since I’ve been able,” Billy confesses, “Before Sir John’s funeral last I recall. I suppose I missed it.”

“Well, if we are being nostalgic, might the newly reborn,” a hand running up his ribs, “Billy Gibson indulge me in sharing the inner workings of his mind? More specifically, if they are in favor or against the man in front of him.” Hickey winks. “All things considered.”

“Have I forgiven you for killing me?” The question turns in his mouth, sluices his throat with bitterness to stir his insides. He wanted to live once, so certain he’d been, when they were just hauling sledges with plenty of supposed non-poisoned rations to spare, but in that camp where he’d found his end, life had been a farce of an existence. Billy takes a stabilizing breath. “I don’t think much of that matters now.” he says.

“Aren’t you eager to give up your worldly ways,” Hickey clucks, “You’ve only been here what, a day longer than I? Always lording your seniority over me. I won’t have it, Billy. Not now.”

“We can hardly be equals, so I presume you intend to be as we were. Don’t be naive. You can’t hurt me here, Cornelius,” Billy says, the sentence punctuated by a sudden shock of knowledge, like witnessing a veil thrust aside, “oh, but that isn’t your name is it?”

“How do you-”

“I know things now. This place lets me do that.”

“This place,” Hickey sneers, “Is this heaven?” He intends the question to come across as patronizing, to mask the frantic desire to comprehend the spiritual. There is a barely contained tremor in his voice that belies the uncertainty. Billy does not find it very becoming. What a silly thing, to feel fear in this nebulous, intractable afterlife. Billy knows better. Billy can see everything so plainly. He must make Hickey see that. There is nothing between them here.

“Are you afraid?”

“No.”

“Liar. Cornelius,” Hickey flinches and Billy pauses, lets Hickey remember what they were to each other, “if this is heaven I belong here, I know everything I’ve done is correct. It’s good for you too, then you’re vindicated, all your horrendous actions judged well in their intent. Is this not God telling us we were correct? Both of us.”

Hickey’s mouth twitches. Conflicted. Confused. “No room for shame in heaven or earth.”

“Yes.”

“So, what now?”

“We wait.”

“For WHAT? For the big man himself to come by and smack my bottom before admitting me into some gilded palace?”

“I don’t think it’ll come to that, but we’ve no other choice.”

“We always have choices.”

“Not anymore. You’ll get used to it.”

Hickey’s head sweeps out, eyes seeking in the abyss of nothingness around them, coming up short. In life they could always depend on that smidgen of hope, that over the horizon or after the sunrise would be their salvation, but in the way he knows Hickey’s true name, Billy knows there is nothing to be found, and Hickey must know it too. Billy pities him, he truly does.

“Come, sit with me a bit. I’ll make it worth your while.”

Billy pulls Hickey to the ground, and on their knees, hands clasped, they kiss like penitents.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos really appreciated, please me gentle!
> 
> Follow me on [Tumblr](www.augustinremi.tumblr.com) or [Twitter](www.twitter.com/seccotines).


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